A Post Office Transformation

From cold post office to a warm one

Short story today!

A wall of mail and packages normally buries the person shuffling papers behind the counter. I’ve been coming to this same tiny US Post Office for five years and it’s always the same man working. No matter what day of the week I go or what time of day, it’s always the same middle-aged short guy who always seems annoyed. He never makes eye contact and swiftly helps you mail your package and moves on to the next customer.

He just grunts when I say hello and seems irritated if I try to engage in conversation. I could go to other posts offices but this one is so close to my house and it’s so small there’s usually never a line.

Every time I go there to mail a package, I see the same man and I always get the same attitude. When I’m in there I always wish there was music playing to at least make it less boring. Heck, even elevator music would make the stone cold silence less deafening.

Today I went to drop off a package and there was the same grumpy man. I was mailing a package to a friend in another country which had gotten retuned to me because I had used the wrong packaging. In an annoyed voice he told me to flip the mailer inside out so that the domestic mail logo was inside and the outside was blank.

I did as he suggested and went back to the counter. Without a word and without eye contact, he handed me a sticky note to write the person’s address. After writing it, I handed it to him and he started clicking away on his keyboard typing in the address.

“Lethbridge.” He said, and looked up at me.

“Um, yes it’s going to Lethbridge, Alberta. Is that okay?”

This man seemed transformed. He stopped typing and started chatting to me as if a spell had lifted off him.

“Lethbridge is great. There is so much unique history there. We were in Glacier National Park then went to Lethbridge then toward Banff and Jasper. Close to Lethbridge is a park with one of the world’s most best preserved dinosaur fossils. I can’t wait to go back up there. We try to go to Canada every year in the summer to escape the Texas heat. We used to go to Colorado but even that is hot now. Going north is way better.”

He went on talking to me about his travels around Canada. Ottawa, Edmonton, he had been all over. He said this summer he and his family were going to Orca’s Island on the limits between the US and Canada.

Who knew that the soft spot for this guy would have been a small town in Alberta. I’d never even heard of the place had it not been for a mentor of mine who lives there. It’s funny the way the world works. Sometimes it seems like a massive place and impossible to get to know it all. Other times it shrinks down to a small world where you and your small post office worker have a bonding moment over a random town in Canada.

I wonder if he spends his days at work thinking about Canadian summers. Maybe that’s why he’s not into small talk or niceties. But I’m glad to have connected with him this time. Finally broke the ice. It was a reminder that we never know why some people are a bit cold or off-putting sometimes, but when we find what we have in common, it changes everything.

Next time I go to the post office, I won’t ask him the usual “how are you?” But I know I can ask him something related to Canada.

Have you ever had interactions like this where suddenly the ice breaks and the person opens up to you?